Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights: Russians raped even babies

Warning: The content of this article may be shocking.

Ukraine Parliament’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Ljudmyla Denisova says In his Facebook postthat Russian soldiers have even raped babies during the war in Ukraine.

Denisova says that in recent days, a lot of victims and their relatives have been called to the emergency telephones of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights from the vicinity of the city of Kharkov, which has recently been recaptured by Ukrainian forces.

According to Denisova, in one day alone, there were 56 calls this week that it was reported, for example, that Russian soldiers had raped a nine-month-old baby girl by candlelight.

“There are no limits to the atrocities of Russian soldiers,” he writes.

Denisova also says two soldiers would have raped a one-year-old boy who died of his injuries.

“Two soldiers raped a two-year-old girl. He survived, ”Denisova writes.

He also told of nine-year-old threesomes who would have been raped in front of their mother’s eyes in Izjum. “She’s in shock,” Denisova told the mother.

In addition, the soldiers are said to have raped two ten-year-old boys and two men between the ages of 67 and 78.

Denisovan reports have not been confirmed from other sources. Among others, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has shared some of the information on Twitter with reference to Denisova.

Denisova appealed to the UN Human Rights Office to investigate the crimes, which she said were part of a “particularly brutal genocide against Ukrainians”.

In recent weeks, the international media and human rights organizations have interviewed many Ukrainians who have said they have been raped by Russian soldiers.

Human Rights Watch, for example said in early April A woman living in the Kharkiv region who had been raped several times by a Russian soldier in mid-March. According to the woman, the rapes took place in a school building where she and her family had fled fighting.

According to the woman, the soldier had also sliced ​​him in the face and neck with a knife. The woman managed to escape the next day to the city of Kharkov, where she received treatment. He sent the organization two photographs showing his facial injury.

Human Rights Organization Chairman of the Ukrainian branch of La Strada Kateryna Tšerepaha told the British newspaper The Guardian in early April that rape is a very serious stigma, even in peacetime, and that a large proportion of rape cases go unreported to the authorities.

“What worries me is that what we’re hearing about now is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Cherepah said at a hearing with the UN Security Council in April that Russia was using rape as a weapon in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyi in turn said in mid-Aprilthat the Ukrainian authorities had heard of hundreds of rapes since Russia launched a major attack on Ukraine on 24 February.

“Hundreds of rape cases have been reported, including the rape of young girls and very young children. Even a baby! ” Zelenskyi said in a speech to the Lithuanian Parliament at the time.

Russia generally denies outright allegations that its soldiers committed war crimes. No information has come to light that Russia is investigating suspected atrocities by its soldiers, such as the murder or rape of civilians.

Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova said in late Marchthat the authorities had launched the first official investigation into the suspected rape in the capital Kiev region. The investigation focused on a case in which a woman said she had been raped twice on March 9 by two drunken Russian soldiers in her home in a small village northeast of Kiev.

According to the woman, soldiers had shot her husband before the rape, accusing the man of being a Nazi.

The President of Russia Vladimir Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov overthrew Venediktova’s allegation of that rape. “We don’t believe it at all, it’s a lie.”